Are you from a school group/ company/ organisation looking for ad-hoc volunteer opportunities?

If you’re looking for an ad-hoc or one-off Values-in-Action (VIA) or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) collaboration, read on!

We’ve worked very well with school groups/ companies/ organisations on an ad-hoc or one-off basis in the past!

Examples of these collaborations:

1. Fundraising for us by creating unique merch and/or selling our merch.

2. Usually in conjunction with an awareness campaign at your school/ office/ organisation to spread education about animal welfare and how shelters like us operate. (If you’d like to invite one of our directors to give a presentation to your organisation, we request for a donation to our animals in exchange).

3. Special projects if skilled: fixing equipment, painting, deep-cleaning, website design/ improvement.

4. Doing “livestream” events and Q&A from our shelter to raise awareness (we ask for a donation for our animals in exchange).

We are open to any other creative ideas as well!

We are happy to host the core group of 5-8 pax from your school/ company/ organisation in person at our shelter afterwards.

What we DON’T do, and why

We are unable to offer the following. Here’s why:

1. We’re not open to one-off visits by a large group to clean the shelter and play with the animals.

   WHY: Our volunteers have to go through a 1 or 2 session training to understand how to behave and carry out tasks in an animal shelter. There are animals with various types of health and behavioural issues here and we need to train our volunteers for their safety and the animals’ safety.

   Our animals are also mostly shy at the first meeting so many of them would prefer to build a bond with familiar faces over time. That would be more rewarding for the humans too!

   We are unable to accommodate groups of more than 8 pax (5-6 is ideal) as the shelter space is not large, and having so many people will overwhelm our animals.

2. We are not able to work together on a “profit-sharing” basis.

   If you’d like to organise a fund-raising event with us, we have to work on an “all proceeds to MCDS” basis, which is what our collaborators always do. In these cases, we respectfully ask to see accounts kept/ invoices/ delivery receipts etc for transparency. We are happy to post all these online too.

   If you’d like to keep some profit and donate some to us, then we are deeply grateful! We would consider that a donation on your part, and we will stay out of the audit/ accounting process. We’ll help reshare your posts to promote your event, but we will not be part of the organising of the event.

   WHY: Full accountability and transparency is very important to us. We are 100% donor-run and volunteer-run. In the past, we’ve been burned by individuals who turned the fundraising into a profit-making endeavour for them. So for the sake of simplicity and transparency, this is how we operate now.

3. We are not able to host your birthday/ engagement/ proposal/ speed-dating events at our shelter.

   WHY: Yes… believe it or not, these are requests that we have received. We can’t be hosting these events as we are not a social space nor an event venue; no matter how “passionate” you are about animal welfare, it doesn’t mean that we should accommodate your social events in a space that is dedicated to the care and well-being of vulnerable animals. We are an animal shelter. Safety and a conducive environment for the animals in our care is our priority.

   However, some very sweet, generous and kind folks have done fundraising in memory of their birthdays/ anniversaries/ weddings/ special events and donated the sum to our animals. We are of course delighted to host you (group of max 8) at our shelter to show you the animals who will benefit from your generosity.

Fundraising merch/ bake sales: Students from Hwa Chong Institute and Dunman High organised sales, raised awareness thru social media & more! (credits: [above] Project Humane; [below] Project Legatto)